Wood for pergola arrives

Aside from spending my vacation making the Roman shades and caulking and fixing the bike hangers and planning next year's permaculture garden and desperately trying to catch up the blogs, I've also been designing a pergola for the front porch. Chris and I cut the lumber at my mom's house last week (that was an exhausting and puzzling enterprise) and he delivered it today.

Below you can see our trouble spot. It was very difficult to cut notches with square sides in 4X4's. This involved about an hour of "maybe we should do it this way," and "Hmm. no, how about this?" communication before we settled on the technique of drilling pilot holes in the corners and using a jigsaw to cut from the ends. And by "we" I meant that I trouble shot, but Chris did all the cutting. I sanded. Because the 4X4's were bigger than the jigsaw blade, we had to flip the wood over and cut from the other side. It is very difficult to get a straight cut using this technique, so I got to do a lot of sanding. Was our technique one that other people use? I wonder if there was even a better way.

After cutting all the wood, I was exhausted and had to rest the next day or so. It was one of those "I'm not quite as young as I think I am" moments that are so fun to experience.